Once again, we’ve found that supermarket special offers aren’t as special as they claim. Even if you see one advertised and visit the shop that day, the item may not be in stock, as our check of over 1,000 items revealed.
We went into shops to look for over 1,200 items on the same day they were advertised as being on special offer – but 5% of these items weren’t available.
Of course, some popular offers will be hard to come by, but would you expect them to be sold out if you went into the store on the day you spotted an ad in the paper?
Worst of all, we found that Sainsbury’s was selling two washing powders at their full price of £20 when they had been advertised as being on offer at half price.
Just how special are these offers?
We’ve looked at supermarket special offers time and again, and each time we’ve found that they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
We already know that bigger multi-packs aren’t always better value even if they claim to be, and that if you order special offer items online they might turn up at full price.
And now we’ve found that it can be difficult to take advantage of special offers even if you go into stores at the earliest opportunity. Is it too much to ask for supermarkets to make sure they have a decent amount of stock for the special offers they’re trumpeting so loudly?
What’s your experience – have you gone shopping to buy an item that’s supposedly on special offer only to find that it’s not there? Or that it’s there, but not on offer?